


Without You

by fairytaletxt



Category: TXT (Korea Band)
Genre: Angst, Character Death Mentioned, Gen, Regret, actual angst, idk what i was going through when i wrote this, it's literally 3 am and im making myself sad, shin soobin is a combination of taehyun and beomgyu and kai, there are two versions of soobin, yeonjun wishes for so much and it's upsetting me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:41:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21965848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairytaletxt/pseuds/fairytaletxt
Summary: "Your hand is so tiny!"
Relationships: Choi Soobin/Choi Yeonjun
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	Without You

**Author's Note:**

> I am so sorry for writing this.

_ “Your hand is so tiny!” I remember your smile as you laced your fingers between mine, your laugh at the difference in size comparison. A scoff accompanied with a smile followed from me as I pulled my hand from yours in a joking manner. Your smirk had been dampened, replaced with a slight frown. Even if I knew your pout and your upset mood was just a mere joke, I couldn’t help but feel guilt creep up my spine until I had successfully fit my hand back into the space it had left abandoned. Your eyes were so pretty, I could barely keep myself from staring. Your questioning gaze brought me back to my senses and averted my own to the mahogany wood of the table in your mother’s kitchen, where we both sat and studied - a loose term I use in place of messing around - every day. _

_ “What?” Rather than answer, you did that cute little action that warmed my heart and made my cheeks flare red - when you grinned tightly and scrunched your nose up in a manner that would look strange on anyone else but you, and I felt my heart rate increase because of you for the first time ever that day. You teased me about it for a long time in the following moment. I feigned irritation, which you took as incentive to continue and soon turned into a small, fake argument that ended with us both creased with laughter. Your siblings took turns to peer around the corner, unbeknownst to you, but I saw them peek for a brief moment then disappear behind the white-painted door that separated the kitchen from the hallway. I didn’t say anything, never thought to bring it up in topic since I know you well. You would’ve turned a similar shade of red to me and hurried to scold them, only to return having had no response other than teasing and cooing from all of them - you were their baby brother, after all. _

_I didn’t want you to leave, though._ _  
__I simply ignored the rotation of heads showing in the doorway, then promptly disappearing as I listened to you speak. I don’t know if I’d ever mentioned it, but your voice is beautiful. Any time you spoke to me, I felt calm, even a sense of happiness deep within my chest - not that I’d ever admit that to you back then. That, accompanied with the way a thin film was pulled over your eyes, glistening excitement filling them with every topic you mentioned. It was so cute to watch, and I know I soon forgot about your eavesdropping siblings. My only focus became you and you knew it._

_ It seemed to be a common theme for me to fall into a trance around you - and I know that anyone who so much as glanced in your direction for a second would know why. There wasn’t a thing about you that didn’t entrance your ‘audience’. You were friendly, never shying away from what was to come next. I admired that about you. I admired you.  _

_ “Yeonjun,” your voice spoke my name so prettily in a lilted manner that made me all the more happy to be your friend and hear that every day. You caught my attention again in that moment, and then I saw your mother standing behind you, a kind smile on her face to greet me with. I’d always found her to be so welcoming and loving, two perfect traits I had learnt had been passed along to you. You always called your mother an angel, claiming to be a ‘half-breed’ confidently. My laugh was always clearest and most sincere when you were the one behind the jokes and the joy. Every day before I met you seemed so grey to me, now it was cast upon by a prism, spewing streaks of light in all colours and vibrancy. I’d like to admit to myself, but never around you, that you brought joy to my life I could never think to put in words. _

_ The day you adopted a puppy was most memorable. I can recall what you said over the phone word for word as if it had been a script I read over and over again relentlessly until I had every syllable memorised. Distant yapping barks from your newfound puppy scratched through the receiver, echoing through my room in static. You even asked me to come over right away to meet him, and I couldn’t help but grow increasingly more excited with each second that passed by. There was nothing I wanted more than to see the utmost euphoria in you when you were with the pet I recalled you asking about for years. All your childlike innocence brought together by a small creature I loved as much as you. Even after that day, when I would come to visit and your puppy would yap excitedly at my presence gave me a warm feeling, as if I was accepted. Would ‘accepted’ be the correct term? I hope so. _

_ Time passed on and my final year in high school was coming to a close. Both of us had matured since the years when we were thirteen and fourteen, playing with your dog and ‘studying’ for the sake of staying close by each other. We were eighteen and nineteen now, and I couldn’t begin to fathom your changes. Comparing you to photographs I had stored away in a box, it was quite comical to see how much the boy I loved turned into you. There wasn’t a single flaw about you, from your pale, rose-dusted skin to your perfectly-rounded lips, I couldn’t point out anything I’d ever want to improve about you. _

_ Your eyes were the same, still a beautiful night sky of wonder and star-speckled nebula. Nothing about the shape nor the childlike joy they held had changed, and my heart swelled at the overwhelming wave of memories we shared when we were younger. We met up on that first day of high school and I couldn’t keep myself staring, admiring you. It was rare to find someone who fit your idea of physical perfection, it was rare to find someone who had an impeccable personality, it was most certainly rare to find someone with both. _

_ That someone for me happened to be you. _

_ “Yeonjunie,” you called out, but you sounded distant as if you were shouting to me from across a hallway. I glanced up to my side, seeing you standing there, looking worried. You called again and the same haze laced my name. It made me dizzy. Your proximity to me grew smaller, asking me what was wrong, yet your voice grew further away from me with every second. An overwhelming sense of dread crossed me as the wind picked up and trees contorted behind you, forming nightmare-ish curves and hooks into the darkened morning sky. I watched you change before my eyes, slipping away from me before I had a chance to reach out and grip the soft fabrics of your school uniform. _

“I need to stop,” I hummed to myself. The grass beneath me was damp with the residue of yesterday’s storm, but I didn’t care. It had almost gone by unnoticed, but the sky shifted in hue, changing from cotton candy pink to muted purple. Nightfall was here and yet I didn’t move, didn’t stand, barely even breathed. I stared ahead, tears welling in my eyes mercilessly, threatening to overflow before I even had a chance to stop them.

A reoccurring theme - I never had a chance to stop it.

The inscription on his headstone was carved out so beautifully. My mind repeated the same two lines that I had written myself, jotted down on a scrap piece of paper one day when I was listening to him sing. Two lines from one of his favourite songs named Skeletons, a song I had soon grown to like when he chose to set up his playlist on the off day rather than mine. It was a song I listened to on repeat once I’d learnt he wasn’t here.  
You aren’t here, either. You never were.

I’d been told before. Friends, family, whoever had the chance to know about you told me to stop. You, as I imagined, had been named after my best friend, killed in a severe car accident involving a drunk driver, his father and himself. Soobin. A pretty name. I loved Soobin, but I know you weren’t him. You look nothing alike. My best friend was short, sharp-faced, frequently bleaching his hair blond and wore nothing but black, whereas you,

You, as I imagined, is who everyone thinks is the perfect person for me.

I wished you were real. One day, I had hoped, a Choi Soobin would come along, tall with the same rose-dusted skin and beautiful round eyes, not a flaw about you. I know how unrealistic it sounds. Maybe somewhere, we’ve met before. Maybe in an alternate universe, we met in a beautiful glass building, maybe we’re famous right now, maybe in a band selling our music to fulfil your dream of being a singer and mine to dance for an audience who would appreciate me.

Thoughts of you filled my mind as I, now twenty-one-year-old Choi Yeonjun scraped my feet lazily against the rugged tarmac pavement that lead from the cemetery to my home. The idea of you wanting to meet me clouded my mind. Tears followed closely, hot against the cold skin on my face that had been whipped viciously by wind earlier in the day. Tears that pooled in my eyes for my best friend, and the tears that I let flow relentlessly for you, who doesn’t even exist in a world other than my mind.

It’s unhealthy, but I’m hung up on the idea of you.

Cute, little yaps startled me from the fogged haze as I soon realised I was standing at my own house, listening to the little puppy I adopted, Sean, scamper through my living room in excitement, dashing down from the window sill only to fly back up again no less than three seconds later. A thin, tear-filled smile etched itself into my face uncomfortably. It was so obviously there to mask the pain that I almost laughed at my feeble attempt to hide it.

The warmth of my home encased me, yet I felt nothing. Sean fled the living room to the front door, circling my legs, excited to see me. I’d like to think that he would be excited to see you, too, Soobin. Maybe, in that other universe, Sean would really be yours, but this universe is lonely. There’s no-one but me, the monster who couldn’t even look his best friend’s family in the eye after his own ‘friend’ got drunk with him one night and killed Soobin.

It’s sad that I’m in this world, and this universe is without you.


End file.
